His phone had lit up with a notification, and he'd seen it just before it turned back off. Thank goodness he never turned on the vibration feature. He would have jumped out of his skin had that gone off.
Normally, he wouldn't bother to look until after he was finished with the contract, but they hadn't really begun yet, and now his skin was itchy with lack of knowledge. Quickly, he fished the phone from his pocket and glanced at the screen, shielding the phone's light with his body to keep it from alerting anyone who might be awake inside.
It was an email notification, one of hundreds that Luc normally ignored. What he couldn't ignore was the sender that was listed.
Zaccheo Licata.
Zaccheo had been Luc's best friend in their teenage academy days in France. He was now settled happily somewhere in Japan, with a family, working as a guildhall administrator. It wasn't often that the two of them emailed back and forth, but they had done it a bit over the last couple years.
This though, made Luc's gut fall to his shoes.
SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION: LSB
If it hadn't been for his initials in it, he probably would have still put off reading the email. In fact, he knew he should put off looking at it anyway. But even though he was all but a god in his club and the guildhall, Luc was still a human. A curious one who had been enduring having answers dangling over his head for years upon years. He opened the email.
* * *
Luc,
* * *
I don't know what made me search for your personnel file in Guild records, but something in my gut told me to do it. I didn't read it, but I did look at my own, and... I know you were always troubled when we were in school. Things you never talked about. Maybe this will help heal some old wounds. If you even read it. Not saying you have to. Just, the Guild knows a lot about us all that we may not know about ourselves. Do with this what you will.
I'm always here to talk if you need to.
* * *
Zekku
* * *
"Father Luc?"
"Go wait in the car," Luc said softly. He turned the phone off and shoved it back into his pocket. His personnel file from the Guild? He hadn't ever considered that such a thing might exist. But of course it did. The Guild seemed to know everything. And there were layers upon layers of workings that Luc knew nothing about.
What if all the answers he'd always been looking for were in that file?
Luc smelled smoke. When he paid attention to his vision again, it was as though a hazy grey fog covered everything, or like he was looking at a world covered in a layer of dust and ash. Echoes of screams he'd never actually heard rang in his ears.
His mother. His father. Henri. Inez.
The Guild-developed master lockpick he'd used to open the door went back into one of his many pockets. The apartment door opened to his touch. He stepped inside. The smoke smell thickened around his brain. Color seeped from his vision, replaced by nothing but grey-scale, like an old TV show or movie. He picked his way silently down a hallway and into a bedroom. The form in the bed was nothing more than a silhouette of a man.
The greyness of his vision closed in tighter, the edges of the world shrinking in so that nothing existed beyond the bed. The air grew thick, tightening Luc's lungs. His breaths rattled in his chest from the smoke of his past returning. He was beside the bed, looking down on the all-too-peaceful face of the man he was here to kill. Short brown hair that looked like it wanted to be unruly capped the man's head, at odds with the neatly-trimmed beard. He was young and clearly took care of himself.
He breathed easily in slumber. The smoke surrounding Luc had no effect on the man in the bed. That had to end.
Luc reached out and clamped a hand across his target's throat. His other hand covered the mouth, for added measure. A moment later, the eyes opened, blackened orbs to Luc's hazed sight. Fear danced within them. Another hand came to Luc's wrist, attempting to dislodge it, to free his air passages, but Luc had the advantages of weight and leverage.
"Five to ten seconds to unconsciousness," Luc heard a voice say. It sounded remarkably like his own. The man beneath his hand began the instinctive violent struggling that came with air loss, but it was feeble and growing weaker. Somewhere in the depths of the smoke and death surrounding his brain, Luc heard his baby sister Inez crying.
"Continue pressure after unconsciousness. Two to three minutes of constant pressure confirms enough reduced blood flow to cause permanent brain damage. Two to three additional minutes will ensure death."
Luc released his fingers and breathed. Color seeped back into the world as his lungs cleared.
The crying had not faded. Luc blinked and couldn't help but notice how Perrillo had chosen to die. One arm flung out to the side, aimed in the same direction as the crying. Luc turned just in time for enough color to return and see the pale pink and yellow blanket inside a battered crib.
The cries were not those of a newborn, or even a small infant. Luc's gut wrenched as he slowly moved to the side of the crib and looked down.
Inez Bertrand had been just over a year old when she'd been killed. The little girl in the crib was probably within a month or two of that same age. Not quite ready to talk. The girl wasn't screaming her head off, but probably wouldn't stop on her own without being comforted.
Luc ripped his eyes from the child and studied the room. Even in the darkness, his vision was adjusted enough to make out the decor. It might be sexist of him to assume it, but he could tell from a glance that no woman lived here. The bed Tyler was in was large enough for one person, not two. Clothes were in piles on the floor while the hamper overflowed. Dirty dishes were on every surface, even here in the bedroom. Luc had only given the file a once-over when he'd first picked it up, but roommates, significant others, and spouses were one of the first things he looked for. He had to know who else might be with the target to act as an obstacle.
He'd been sure no wife, roommate, or girlfriend had been listed.
Then again, a child hadn't been listed, either.
The toddler girl had pulled up and was standing, holding onto the rail, still crying.
No wife listed. No mother, not that the Guild knew of.
Luc couldn't just leave her here. Even if he arranged for the authorities to find the corpse soon, he had no idea if anyone would claim the child.
He'd been an orphan. The "system" in the United States was garbage. The girl would end up lost and troubled, problematic, or a delinquent. Oh, there were exceptions--thousands of them. But her odds wouldn't be good. And there was always the chance she could end up in the Guild eventually. But that would take years before she was old enough. Who knew what would happen to her in ten or twelve years?
He couldn't leave her to that. If he'd had to take her father's life, he could at least give her one. He was not his sister Esme, content to leave children scarred and lost, without family.
"Shhh," he whispered softly to the girl as he began moving about the room with more purpose. "Hush, little one."
Perrillo's wallet only gave up a couple pictures with no names or dates on them. It did, however, contain a few numbers that Luc figured must be a combination. That meant there was a safe. Knowing people's tendencies, he immediately went to the closet. Amid more piles of clothes in varying states of cleanliness, he found a small fire safe. It wasn't big or heavy, and he'd been right about the combination. When the lid clicked open, Luc peered in and found a few papers. Among them was a birth certificate and a few financial documents. The man might have been a bit of a slob when it came to his house, but he wasn't an idiot when it came to his daughter.
Luc looked only long enough to read the name on the birth certificate. The closed and locked fire safe went on the bed, followed by a backpack from the floor. He stuffed it with of the girl's clothes and a few other things. Slinging it over his shoulders, he went to the sniffling girl and gently pulled her up against his chest. "Shhh. It's okay, little one. I've got you."
Putti
ng all her weight in one arm, he collected the fire safe box again with his other hand. Leaving the dead man behind him, Luc whispered before leaving the room, "I'll take care of her, Tyler."
To the girl, who was beginning to calm at the warmth and contact, he said, "Daddy's got you, Whitney. Daddy's got you."
5
If Emily thought it odd that he returned with a small child, she said nothing about it. Nothing, that was, until Luc climbed into the backseat with Whitney still in his arms. "Do you know how to drive yet?" he asked quietly.
"I'm not even old enough to have my permi--"
"Yes, but do you know how to?" he asked again.
Slowly, she nodded. "Kinda?"
"Take it slow. I just need to get somewhere to buy her a car seat. There's a store not far from here." He gently rocked the child in his arms. The girl's eyes were starting to grow heavy again. "Emily, I know it's a lot to ask of you. And it's probably more foolish of me to trust you to drive than to just hold her. But I don't know if I can let her out of my arms just yet."
Taking a deep breath and nodding, Emily scooted into the driver's seat and took a few moments to look over the dashboard. "Okay. I'm ready. Are you buckled in?"
At his affirmation, Emily glanced at her cell phone and nodded to herself. "It's only like two miles to a store from here. Just out of the neighborhood."
"Good. Slowly. It's late, and there shouldn't be much traffic. Are you sure you're okay with this?"
Whitney suddenly opened her mouth and wailed, drowning out Emily's reply. Luc felt more than heard the car start. As the young initiate put the car into drive, Luc wondered if he was being completely daft in asking her to drive. What if she drove them into a ditch or a telephone pole? Then Luc trusted himself to protect the child with his body. It was senseless, he knew, to not want to let her go when it would be safer for him to be driving, but he couldn't seem to make himself even adjust his grip on her, much less release his hold of her.
Call it my first foolish failing of judgement as a parent, he thought as the car began creeping forward. He could have managed a five-minute drive and reclaimed Whitney afterward.
The car came to a stop in a parking lot. Luc blinked, disbelieving they'd already arrived at the store, but they had. He'd completely lost himself in the child in his arms, who was calming down again.
Half an hour later, he finally relinquished his hold on Whitney as he installed the new car seat into the Guild-owned vehicle. Whitney woke again and looked around curiously as he settled her into the seat.
It was eking towards one A.M. when Luc finally parked the car at Umbra Motus.
Luc extracted a deeply sleeping Whitney from the car seat and followed Emily as they entered the guildhall. "Daughter," he whispered, to which Emily turned around. "I expect you to report to the administration office and inform them the contract has been completed. Let them know I will be available for details tomorrow."
The initiate nodded. "Yes, Father."
A nod from him served as a dismissal, and she swept away into the guildhall. She had potential. Not quite to the point of disappearing into shadows, or being silent, but she would be. In a handful of years, she might be close, anyway.
In taking his first step into the common area of the guildhall, he regretted once again not having a private entrance to his own chambers. The moment the assassins and students saw him with the blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms and the backpack on his back, there were questions. Fortunately, even awash in excitement and curiosity, his people were quiet. Whitney continued to sleep even as staff and students crowded Luc to see just what he was holding. There was no avoiding it. By dawn, every assassin would know that Luc had returned with a child. He made it across the common room in only a few seconds, but the knowledge was out. The speculation had begun. What would he do with the child? Who was she? Could she be his, suddenly abandoned to his solo care? Was the Guild going to start raising babies or toddlers?
Luc finally reached his chambers and shut the whispers out. Whitney fidgeted in her sleep but settled again as he laid her in the center of his bed. For a few long minutes, Luc watched her sleep. Already, he couldn't remember the face of the man he'd killed only two hours ago. He may have only imagined it, but he thought the girl resembled him. Perhaps. He couldn't be certain. Would he always see the indistinct face of her father when he looked at her? How often would he get to look at her, if she was taken in by the Guild?
He'd assured her that Daddy was here. He'd meant it. It hadn't been her fault her father had ended up with his name on an assassin's contract. She didn't deserve to have lost him, and with no mother in the picture. But growing up here, she'd have virtually no choice but to eventually become an assassin.
She deserved better. His daughter deserved better. Luc had been faced with that lack of options after losing his family. Whitney would have more choices in her life. More freedom.
Luc determined that she would not live in the shadows, as he did.
His mind went to other assassins he'd known who had families. King Roger and his son, who had followed in his father's footsteps. Zaccheo Licata, who he doubted allowed his children to even know what he did for a living, much less allowed to enter an academy. Gilles LaTorneau, his former boyfriend, who had been wanting to adopt a child with his non-assassin husband, Damian. Their child would be given choices.
What would growing up in a place like this do to a child? Luc could do better for her.
Despite the hour, he went to his personal, non-Guild email and looked up an email address he hadn't used in years. He'd hired a realtor to help him purchase the land where Umbra Motus now stood. He hoped the woman would also help him find a house. And swiftly.
6
Luc woke up to garbled sounds and only spent a few seconds wondering at their source. He wasn't certain when he'd climbed up onto the bed and curled up protectively around the small form of Whitney in his bed. An empty spot formed in his gut. He'd curled up like this more than once with his baby sister Inez. How old would she be now, if she were alive? In her mid-twenties, he thought, counting the years backwards. She'd never had a chance.
Whitney was looking at him with big eyes and a furrowed brow. The sweet gurgles that had woken him were quickly turning fretted. She was working herself up to a cry. Some old, very old, nearly forgotten habits from the past had him in action. It took a bit of time for his hands to recall just how to change a diaper, but he managed it with only minimal annoyance to himself and Whitney. Feeding her from one of the jars of pureed food he'd gotten from the store involved propping her up in his lap with one arm and feeding her with the other hand. He'd need a high chair eventually. He made a mental note of it.
Her immediate needs sated, Luc settled her back on his bed with her blanket and waited a few moments to see that she was content. It was only 8 o'clock. When could he expect a reply from the realtor? What would happen when the man he'd killed last night was found, and the child was reported missing? He couldn't ignore that it would happen. He had to act now if he was going to protect her.
Gathering Whitney up again, he made for the administration office. Betty Ferriby was already there, nursing a large mug of coffee. The older woman's eyes lit up at seeing the little girl Luc had propped on his hip. "Oh, Father Luc, she's so cute! Hi, sweetie!" She was up from her desk in a second and had Whitney in her arms a second later, bounding her and making weird noises and faces at her. Whitney began laughing, almost maniacally. Her smile and the sound of her giggles made him want to cry.
"I'm finding myself in a complicated situation," Luc said carefully.
"I'll say," Betty replied, settling Whitney naturally on her own hip. "What on Earth possessed you to bring her here?"
"I couldn't leave her. I... don't think she has anyone else."
Betty bounced gently as she stood. "Well, that's never bothered you before with targets."
"It's never been like this," he said. How could he possibly expect her to understand what had happene
d to him last night? He'd completely detached, stopped thinking altogether. It had been years since that had happened. He'd thought he'd put it past him. But Whitney... was like a chance for him to protect someone who genuinely needed him to save her. He couldn't have lived with himself if he'd left her behind. "The Guild has... resources..." he mumbled.
One of Betty's eyebrows shot up. "What kind of resources are you looking for? She's way too young to enter an academy. We don't have an Order of Balance Daycare Center."
"Not those kinds of resources. I mean to get around police intervention. Government intervention. No investigations."
Her lips pursed. "And what exactly are you wanting them not to investigate or intervene in?"
"My keeping her."
There was a long pause, broken only by a loud spit-slinging raspberry from Whitney. Betty absentmindedly wiped the girl's mouth with the hem of her shirt. "You keeping her? You mean, until she's old enough?"
"I mean..." he hesitated to say the word, but he had no choice, "adopting."
The second pause was uninterrupted. It ended with Betty's single word. "Okay."
"Thank you, Betty. Sooner would be better than later." He reached for Whitney and was both pleased and horrified that she eagerly reached for him to take her. Could a child so easily accept a change in guardianship? "I have her birth certificate to wipe or transfer or whatever you need to do. I'll want to keep as much of her true information as makes sense. Birthday and given name. I suppose we'll have to give her my surname, though..."
"It would remove a lot of issues down the road," Betty agreed.
"I'll get the certificate to you soon, then."
A reply from his realtor was waiting for him by the time he'd changed Whitney again and thought to check his email. His response to her committed him to an afternoon looking at houses, even though it was Sunday. There was enough time for him to get Whitney's car seat moved from the Guild vehicle into his Audi and go do some shopping for a few other necessities. A high chair, a proper diaper bag, and all the necessities to fill the diaper bag later, Luc met up with his realtor and toured half a dozen houses within a five-mile radius of Umbra Motus. As much as he wanted to heed her advice not to choose anything hastily or to sleep on a place before making an offer, Luc didn't feel as though he had that kind of time.
Luc Bertrand- American Assassin Page 25